


One Foot in Sea and One on Shore

by AccioInvisibilityCloak



Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Bea's POV, Day At The Beach, F/M, Swearing, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2109282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioInvisibilityCloak/pseuds/AccioInvisibilityCloak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hero organizes a beach day to try and alleviate all this weird tension in the group. Bickering, water fights, and some unforeseen developments ensue. Beatrice's point of view. Slightly AU because certain people stop being idiots and kiss before The Thing happens instead of afterward.</p><p>Based on a prompt from Tumblr user seasnss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Foot in Sea and One on Shore

“Hey, Bea? Remember when we were younger, and we used to go to the beach all the time?” Hero asks sweetly, and Beatrice immediately knows something is up.

  
          The beach is where she and Hero spent most of their time, all those summers when she would come up and visit for a month or two. From the ages of eight to fifteen, Bea had splashed in those waves and dug her toes into that sand. She’s met some of her best friends at the beach: she and Pedro took that synchronized faceplant there when they were nine; Hero had introduced her to Meg and Ursula over ice cream on the sand when Bea was ten; she’d actually happened to meet the Dickface-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named by accidentally hitting him in the face with a beach ball she’d thrown for Pedro to catch the summer they were all fourteen. That was a good throw.

  
         Anyway, Beatrice and her friends haven’t been to the beach once since she moved to Auckland, though she suspects Hero and the girls went a few times over the early summer, before she’d gotten there. Beatrice is more than happy to avoid the place, nice as it once was. She doesn’t need reminding of the time when she and Benedick were still friends.

         She never talks about it with Hero, but she actually still misses those days. He was so funny and bright and still slightly annoying and she has to admit, she liked spending time with him. She liked when they would have debates about whose taste in music and TV and books was superior, or answer would-you-rather questions with opposite responses and break down why their choice was best. She laughed when he imitated Pedro nervously trying to talk to his then-crush, and she had been delighted every time one of her own imitations or witty remarks managed to make him laugh. Beatrice looks back on all her memories of them with a fondness and a smile- until she inevitably reaches the ones where they grew apart. She still doesn’t understand why he started being so rude and distant that summer four years ago. She tries not to let it show how much his every teasing word affects her even still, and she calls him an impossible, irredeemable dickface, and she denies it up and down when her friends start insinuating that she might actually want to spend more time in his damnable company. And she stays away from the beach.

  
Hero should know this, Bea thinks irrationally. Against her better judgement, though, she answers the question with another question. “Yeah… what about the beach?”

  
           Bea is at Hero’s desk, working on editing a vlog, while her cousin is supposed to be in the other room digging through Beatrice’s closet for some shoes she wants to borrow. Instead, Hero stands in the doorway with an old green scrapbook in her arms. “Look, I found our summer memory book!” Hero exclaims, showing Beatrice some of the pages, covered in photos and Ferris wheel tickets and pressed flowers, phrases like “best friends” and “fun in the sun” emblazoned across the collage of memories. It had been the aunties’ idea, to make Hero and Bea feel better when they had to say goodbye at the end of the summer. They used to cry and hold each other and hide in Hero’s closet for the whole of the last day of each summer visit, in hopes that Bea wouldn’t have to go home. The scrapbook would be a way to end the visits on a high note, going through all the fun they’d had and spending the day gluing bits of it to paper. Each girl has one, filled with seven years’ worth of friendship collages, and Bea smiles as she looks at the old photos of tiny her and tiny Hero grinning back up at her.

  
“It was on a shelf in your closet, under a couple shoe boxes full of old seashells. We had a lot of fun, didn’t we, Bea?” Hero says wistfully. Bea agrees. “Yeah… yeah, we really did.”  
“I think this is exactly what everyone needs right now,” her cousin admits.

  
“What, to see old photos of us?”

  
Hero swats gently at Bea’s shoulder. “A day at the beach, silly! Come on, Claud’s been so distant, Pedro seems upset about something, Ursula says Balthazar’s been down lately …and you definitely haven’t been yourself-”

“Hey!”

“The point is, we need a little fun and sun! It’s still pretty warm out, and it’s supposed to be beautiful weather tomorrow. We have to do this, Bea! Our friends need us,” Hero pleads.

And this whole discussion is entirely unfair, because no one can resist Hero Duke’s sad puppy face.

Beatrice grudgingly agrees to go.

                                                                                                                                    ***

  
“I am going to _disembowel_ you and feed your entrails to a pack of direwolves,” she hisses in Hero’s ear the next morning, because this was not supposed to happen.

         The traitorous little plotter invited Benedick. And now he’s out in the water with the guys, where he seems to be splashing Claudio in the face. To which the other boy answers him a giant wave, slapping his hands against the water and getting Ben even more soaked through. She can see him shivering for a moment before he throws himself at Claud, and no she most certainly is not disappointed when he’s submerged, because she was so not staring at him just now, definitely not, and this insistence seems to be a pattern in her thoughts lately, and what is happening to her?

Hero is laughing, watching all this unfold from her spot on the sand, perfectly dry and sunbathing in her favorite rose-pink bikini. Bea spots an old plastic bucket on the sand near Balthazar’s towel and grins evilly.

A second later, Hero shrieks loudly enough to raise the boys’ concern down at the water. Bea has just dumped a bucket of cold water all over her cousin. Revenge is sweet.

Hero decides there’s no point in staying out of the water now, and chases Beatrice down there to join the others.

And speaking of sweet revenge, Bea could definitely do without the reverse repeat of the first time she met the Dickface Extraordinaire, who totally tries and fails to set the blame on Pedro when another game of catch results in a beach ball leaving a bright red mark on Bea’s cheek. She catches everyone by surprise when she decides not to retaliate. Any other summer would have found her thrashing him, maybe pushing him off the floating pier and into the seaweed patch on the far side. This time, Beatrice goes for a little subtlety. She makes it back to her towel and dry land without anyone seeing the large wet bundle of green stuff she’s wound around a wrist. It hides neatly in the bucket she’d used to soak Hero, with a little extra water so it won’t dry out. Bea picks up her book and makes sure the others can see her put her nose in the air as she slides big black sunglasses on and starts to read. She can’t help but take more than several glances over the top of the page at her intended target, but only because she needs to plan. This has nothing to do with swim trunks and wet skin and stupid lanky frames, nothing at all. She smiles behind her book. _Just you wait, Benedick. Just you wait and see what happens when you crash my beach day and throw things at me._

  
The beach ball flies in her direction again, landing in the sand a few feet in front of her. Beatrice doesn’t notice, but any close inspection will reveal faded Sharpie on either side, the result of a long ago battle over whose particular beach ball this was. “Beatr-” reads one side, the rest of the letters gone. On the side facing back towards the ocean, a fourteen year old boy’s untidy scrawl. “Ben.”

  
                                                                                                                                ***

  
         Everyone is dried off and their sand-coated clothes pulled on over wet skin and damp suits. Hero has broken out the picnic basket she and Leo packed last night, and lunch is in full swing. Claudio is sitting beside her, expression unreadable, and Bea hopes he’s snapped out of whatever funk he was in. Hero looks very happy to have him in close proximity. She presses a kiss to his cheek. He doesn’t return it.

The rest of the group has been embroiled in a good old fashioned game of Would You Rather, and Beatrice and Ben still keep picking the exact opposite answers and trading rationales and insults like they’re book recommendations or something. What an idiot, Bea is thinking. Who would rather be a zombie than a ghost?  
Beatrice is on red alert for the perfect moment to let her plan from before unfold when Pedro says, “Alright, guys, I have another one for you. Do you remember the mermaids question?”

“Ohhhh, no,” says Hero. “Don’t bring that up again.” And when Meg and Ursula and Balthy look blank, she explains. “So when we were fourteen, Bea and Pedro came up with this riddle. Would you rather become a mermaid, but never live on land or see your human friends again, or would you remain a human forever, but you know that mermaids exist and you can never prove it to anyone?”

“And I am STILL right on this one, Beatrice," Ben insists. "There’s no way anyone rational would choose to be a merperson! Why would I give up my friends and my feet to be a hybrid fish stuck in that muck forever?!”

“Oh, please,” Bea retorts. “You are such a wimp. Who turns down magic powers and a tail because they can’t handle a little seaweed?”

“And how do you know I wouldn’t miss-” Ben trails off a moment, blushing, before continuing. “Er, wouldn’t miss anyone on land more than I’d want magic or high speed swimming skills?”

“Who would miss you? That’s the real question, and besides, you would still have to know merpeople are real and never tell anyone!”

“Excuse me, I happen to be quite well-liked around here thank you. Wouldn’t you guys miss me?” Ben appeals to Pedro and Claud, who roll their eyes and grudgingly admit that sure, they would. “There, see?” Ben demands of Beatrice, gesturing to the guys. “And anyway, I could tell people about the mermaids. They just wouldn’t believe me, is all. I could still become a famous Crazy Mermaid Theorist and turn a profit off the whole thing. So you're still wrong!”

Beatrice rolls her eyes. “That’s just completely stupid and you know it. You’re already crazy anyway! All your stupid bird killings and fake bravado-”  
“No stupider than you thinking mermaids really do exist! You’re usually so sensible, one would think you’d know fairy tales are daft. But I’m not surprised you don’t care about anyone else enough to stay human for them, fish face!” he sneers.

"Hey, hey," Pedro admonishes, but no one pays him any mind. 

           They’re all too busy goggling at the sight of Benedick with half a bucketful of wet seaweed and lukewarm water all over him. He’s attempting, unsuccessfully, to extricate himself from the slimy stuff, throwing bits at Beatrice while saying “ewww eewwww ewwwww get it off!” like an arachnophobe with a spider on his shoulder.

  
           Beatrice is so busy basking in the glow of her perfect revenge that she doesn’t realize until it’s too late that Ben is making a grab for the bucket containing the rest of the seaweed. Before she knows it she’s running full-tilt along the beach and Ben is chasing her with the seaweed in hand, and when she looks over her shoulder and sees him with the green gunk in his dark hair, falling into his eyes, contrasting unpleasantly with his reddening cheeks, she can’t help herself. She starts laughing, wildly and uncontrollably as she runs into the wind.

           An unfortunately placed bit of driftwood sends her sprawling, and then she feels Ben trip over her legs and fall too, and when she twists around to look at him and sees the sand sticking to his shirt and covering the seaweed on his head, she absolutely dies.

Ben is less amused, and shows it by throwing the rest of the seaweed all over her own hair, and a wet glob of it slides down the back of her neck, and the gross sticky feeling just makes her squirm and laugh harder.

And the sight of her finally breaks Ben down and he crows with laughter right alongside her, even helps her up- a very stupid move that gives her the chance to push him, seaweed and all, into the water.

He pops back up in a matter of seconds, soaked again, and glowers at her, floating there.

“You,” Bea gasps between giggle fits, “would make a terrible mermaid, dickface.”

“Oh?” he grins mischievously. “What kind of mermaid would you be then?” And he lunges, grabs her, pulls her down into the ocean too.

“The kind whose voice lures handsome young sailors to their doom,” she says without preamble, as soon as she too has resurfaced. They’re very close in the water, and her traitor of a mind flashes unwarranted to that scene in _The Little Mermaid_ where Ariel and Eric are holding each other as they float in the water, trying to avoid getting killed by one of Ursula’s massive tentacles slamming down on the surface. Where’s the Sea Witch when you need her? Bea thinks.  
The cool water and the flash of Disney romance are definitely conspiring to make her blush, and God, the number of times she’s caught herself blushing lately. Fairy tales are shit.

“Well I should probably get back on land before you start singing then, shouldn’t I?” Ben raises an eyebrow.

She laughs, tells him he’s absurd, allows him to help her out of the water.

“I really thought you were going to pull me in again, Bea. You’re going soft, my friend.” He’s smiling.

“Shut up, seaweed brain.”  
“Make me, fish face.”  
“Maybe I will,” and she steps, incredibly, closer.  
“Maybe you sh-”

          She makes good on the promise then, and the end of his sentence is lost, because Beatrice throws herself into his arms, blindsiding both of them with the unexpected hug. It shouldn’t be comfortable; they’re both soaked and shaking and covered in kelp. Somehow though, Bea doesn’t mind. She’s just the right height so that she can rest her head on his shoulder, and her nose is pressed into the warmth of his neck, and he smells like the ocean and like something she can’t pinpoint, just warm and sweet and… Ben. At first he stiffens in shock, and then his arms are around her and he hugs her back and she never wants to pull away, but she does, because she needs to see his face. Arms still around him, she raises her head, meets his eyes. He looks absolutely flabbergasted, but the corner of his mouth turns up in a slightly embarrassed smile.

“I’ve missed you, you know.” She smiles back, and finally the weirdness hanging between them feels like it might be departing, after weeks of avoidance and discomfort, and that pinching in her heart when she heard her friends saying that he loves her.

“Really, I would never have guessed,” he teases, and she can’t pretend anymore. Not another second.

         In the space of that second nine summers stretch out, winding to this moment they’ve been waiting for. And maybe this is a terrible idea, and maybe she’s ruining everything, but as she contemplates his eyelashes it doesn’t feel like it at all. One bare foot is still in the sea, waves breaking in the background like white noise. One foot is planted on shore, toes curling in the sand. Beatrice is standing at a crossroads, in the arms of Benedick Hobbes, of all people.

And her breathing quickens as the space between them closes, once and for all.

She kisses him hard, savoring the feeling of his soft, full lips against hers, and it feels like the first drop of water after a long walk through the desert. Beatrice can’t imagine why it’s taken so long for them to end up here. She never wants to be anywhere else again.

He kisses her back, just as hungrily, and though she can taste his surprise at first, it quickly turns to a joyous smile against her lips. Ben’s hand finds its way into her hair, which is still wet and full of seaweed, but he doesn’t seem to mind it now. Bea hears herself sigh with pleasure. Shivering against the ocean breeze and the sheer sensation of it all, she presses herself closer still against him, deepening the kiss, and he responds in kind and with enthusiasm, and nothing has ever felt so right as this.

Somewhere up the beach the Love Gods look on, hooting and hollering and laughing their asses off because fucking _finally_.

Where the ocean meets the shore, Beatrice and Benedick are lost in their own little world. Their hearts are racing and their lungs are burning, but they don’t come up for air for a very long while.

Maybe they _should_ be mermaids.

**Author's Note:**

> My prompt was "Bea and Ben both like each other but won't admit it and they get into another heated debate and end up kissing. I want that" -seasnns. This is what I came up with. I hope it fulfills the prompt enough for you.  
> This one was a lot harder that it sounded when I first read the prompt. I'm not completely happy with it, but I am done editing it as of now, so what the heck, might as well put it up. I don't own the Little Mermaid reference near the end, nor do I own the phrase "seaweed brain", which I borrowed from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. I thought it was fitting for the situation. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Please do not copy/duplicate this work. Or I will throw seaweed in your face.


End file.
